Milch, Field Marshal Erhard

Milch, Field Marshal Erhard (1892–1972),deputy Reich commissioner for aviation from 1933 who was a prime mover in founding the Luftwaffe.

Born in Wilhelmshaven, Milch commanded a fighter squadron during the First World War. After it he served with several airlines before joining Lufthansa in 1926, eventually rising to become its chief executive in 1929. Milch was an early Nazi supporter, and when Göring—who had been receiving Lufthansa's financial support for several years—became Reich commissioner for aviation in 1933 he appointed Milch his deputy. Though Göring only allowed him a free hand for the first two years, it was Milch, as Göring's state secretary, who ran the new air ministry; and by various stratagems, including using Lufthansa as a front, he helped organize the construction of an air force that, kept secret up to 1935, by 1939 was the most powerful in the world.

Milch was commissioned as a colonel in the army in 1933 (the Luftwaffe was not officially formed until March 1935), but his rise was meteoric and by 1938 he was a Luftwaffe general. He commanded 5th Air Fleet during the Norwegian campaign in April 1940 with great success, and was promoted field marshal that July. He had become inspector-general of the Luftwaffe at the start of the war and in November 1941 took on the technical directorate of the air ministry after Udet committed suicide. In 20 months he increased German aircraft production 2.7 times, but in June 1944 virtually all military arms production was consolidated under Speer and Milch's resignation as director of air armament followed. Göring, with whom Milch had long been in dispute, then dismissed him as state secretary but he stayed as inspector-general until January 1945 and was made deputy armament minister by Speer. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials but was released in 1955.

Bibliography

Irving. D. , The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Erhard Milch (London, 1973).